Corn and lemon and some other things all in a paper cup. I was six. Maybe seven. We walked through Pune and I wore my white hat. The white hat is now long gone, torn lost dead. It was my grandfather's, the kind that umpires wear. He wasn't an umpire but he could have been.

I didn't want to eat the corn. It was too sour. But when I said that I was silenced with stories of children dying of hunger. So I ate all of it and my nose leaked and my vision got all blurred. I didn't throw the paper cup away, because I assumed there are children in the world without paper cups.

I came home and planted a plant in the cup. My grandfather let me borrow some of the soil from his garden. "Do you want me to help you?" he asked. I said no and watered the small soil filled cup for a few days until the cup turned to mush and the plant looked dismal.

A few leaves shot out a week later. They smelled of lemons but not of corn. It died eventually and I threw the whole mucky package into the dustbin. I was sadder than I thought I'd be. But not as sad as the children in the world, I was told.

I came out and saw him. He was standing at the door, with his back to me.

You aren't supposed to be here. I felt my voice tear.

I am not, he replied.

They carried him away when I was 10. On a long, white sheet. They didn't have time for a stretcher. I called out to him then, but he didn't reply. I called out, again and again till all I heard were the remains of my sound flitting about.

Don't come in. I shouted at him. Don't come in now. It's too late. I have given up on you. You can't just come along and change all of that. 

His white shirt is dirty. 

He never came back. All that I saw was a bag of his clothes. A plastic bag, as if we went shopping for vegetables and didn't know where to put them. 

He went away. 

I told myself I was relieved. I can't deal with all this, I said.

Then I threw up in the bathroom and fell asleep on the floor. 

The hand us a bucket of paint. It can be any colour. I choose blue, because that's my favourite colour. 

They hand us a white piece of canvas. We are to paint the first things that comes to our heads. I make a fence. It's pretty fence, really; with even spokes and neat outlines. When they ask me why I painted a fence, I have nothing special to say. "It was the first thing I thought of." I tell them. The others laugh at me, they've all painted seemingly profound things - a green heart with jagged lines and a black horse.

I look at my blue fence and try to come up with an explanation. I can't.

The canvas is still lying somewhere in my desk.

An art project at age 8, where we were being subtly psychoanalyzed.

Soothe

Alan sat on the porch; a half empty plate of food lay next to him. His parents’ voices could be heard even through the closed doors. He could picture his mother saying spiteful things, her face turning an angry red. He could picture his father crushing his yellow stress ball while screaming back. Initially, his father used the stress ball after a particularly long computer session. “Don’t want to get carpal tunnel, now, do I?” his father had said to him. He didn’t know what carpal tunnel was. He hadn’t asked, either. Now there was no time to ask. His parents were so caught up in their own complicated worlds they had no time for him.

Now that his parents fought a lot, he spent a lot of time on the porch. In all his 8 years, he had never witnessed such a tense atmosphere at home. He couldn’t even bear to be around his parents. Meal times were the worst. They either yelled at each other or maintained a cold silence. He wasn’t sure which was worse. Sometimes, he would slip away with his plate and no one would notice. The last time his mother had given him so much as a concerned look was when he had come home early one day from school with a stomach ache. The minute he felt better, she had zoned out again. 

Today’s fight was about her unkempt her. His father had made some snide remark about how her hair was so untidy. She had retaliated saying with all the stress that he gave her she had no time to tend to her hair. Alan had picked up his plate and walked out. He could still hear snatches of the conversation. The fight about unkempt hair was now about unpaid bills. Alan’s young mind couldn’t keep up with the bitter verbal blows that his parents were exchanging. He stuck his fingers in his ears and wished that they would stop.

He thought of the time when his parents still loved him and each other. He missed falling asleep between them. He missed his mother ruffling his hair at breakfast; while his parents sneaked a kiss which he pretended to not notice. If he was sick, his mother would stroke his hair till he fell asleep. He craved their attention. In a selfish way, he wanted them to stop fighting long enough to look at him.

Alan realized soon enough that sticking his fingers in his ears wasn’t really helping. He got up and started walking around in his backyard. He wondered what he could do to make his parents stop fighting. Finally, he had his answer. He walked over to an old rickety table where his father kept his toolbox. He picked up a rusted hammer and toyed with it. He placed his small hand on the table and brought down the hammer on his hand with all the force he could muster. There was lesser blood than he expected but the pain was beyond belief. His scream pierced through the afternoon air. For a split second there was absolute silence. Then his parents came running. His father saw his hand and ran to get ice. His hand looked like it was broken. His mother, shocked to see him in pain, started kissing his head, his face, his injured hand. Tears ran down her cheeks. His father returned with the ice. They both tried to hold him close. They both tried to comfort him. Between their stricken faces and his immense pain, he felt a sense of calm. His aching hand has soothed him. Standing there, his parents hugging him, he realized that despite the streaks of blood on the front of his shirt, he was happier than he had been in a while.

Crows took away his food because he was too distracted by his own imagination – where he saw errant spaceships and machine guns. When he told his mother that the food she gave him was consumed by birds, she wasn’t sure if she’d need to applaud his imagination or scold him for lying. Either way, she didn’t believe him. He promised us that it was true though.

He was so taken by the concept of gravity, that he threw things one by one from the window of his living room. It started small – pieces of plastic and paper rockets and then progressed to slightly bigger things like chairs and vases. As the birds flew, not very far away, in tight little groups, the little boy stood at his window, tossing away whatever he could lay his hands on. He watched the pillow drop onto the ground with a dull thud, his cape fluttering dramatically. Some days, he was his own superhero.

As she came back from work, his mother found furniture from her home strewn across the building compound. She looked up confused and saw a grinning seven year old who was just about to discover that when things are thrown from an adequate height, you get slapped across your bottom by a parent.


Happy Birthday Ashish! I hope the year ahead is as eventful as the stories you tell us!

Home.

We became who we are in a house with checkered tiles and pale yellow walls. We put away our lego pieces in a blue bucket with a lid. We played cards, the plastic variety with pictures of fruits and coconut trees on one side, sitting cross legged on the bed. We kept our books away in a wooden cabinet with glass doors.

The walls had tiny doodles, our names carved in child-like handwriting and random, disconnected words which may have meant something to us at that time. The wall next to the telephone once had phone numbers jotted with felt pen, because clearly nobody bothered themselves with diaries. It used had a funny feel to it, untidy but comfortably familiar. Then the walls got painted and the numbers found their away into more advanced, and less messy, technology.

The kitchen always smelled good and the refrigerator always atleast one thing that made us happy, ice-candy sticks with the cheap paper sticking to them or leftover pieces of cake with a spoon frozen in it, from a someone else’s mid night snack.

We are still becoming people we want to become in the same house, with the memories of all those years lurking behind doors and lying silently amidst dusty books.

In the nights, we peep from behind the curtains and watch the street slowly wrap up its day; boisterous trees, sleeping dogs and twinkling lights from homes of people who have also probably lived there forever.

Mira.

The beginning of monsoons was the saddest thing, when I was 7. It meant the onset of school and the end of a glorious summer that had been spent playing cards and drinking cold milk. More importantly, however, it meant that Mira would go away.

Mira was our maid’s daughter. She was my age, give or take a few years. She was short with long hair tied in an untidy plait. She had big, watery eyes and a small smile. When she craned her neck, you could see a sharp, cocoa- coloured collar bone.

Mira was the youngest in a family of 4 kids. Her mother, our maid- Malti couldn’t imagine raising her kids in a heartless city like Bombay. She feared that if she kept them with her in her shed-like house, some danger was bound to come their way. If it’s not the rains, it will be some dreadful disease, she told my mother emphatically one day. So they lived with their uncle in a small village in Kerala and came to Bombay for a month in the summer.

Mira wasn’t like my other friends. For one, she was very curious about my books. At the end of every summer, she would take back a few old books of mine. I am not sure if she read them, but they would make her happy. Unlike the rest of my playmates, she had an odd sense of loyalty towards me. She would beg to be on my team when we played carom. Even though I lost almost every game back then, she seemed to want to lose with me, just the same. I taught her to play scrabble. Naturally, I won but that didn’t seem to upset her in the least. She said she’d rather lose to me than win against someone else. To my 7 year old mind, that was the best compliment one could receive.

Most days she would go back home. She would trail behind her mother, idly holding the end of her mother’s sari. Some days she would fall asleep in front of the TV watching cartoons. If her mother came to get her, my father would say- Let her be. You can take her back tomorrow. The next morning- Mira’s eyes would sparkle as she stuffed her small mouth with egg. She once told me her mother had warned her to never eat egg. It was her small rebellion. I promised never to tell anyone. That was the extent of our secrets. Eating eggs.

Then one day she told me a real secret. To this day, I remember the look in her eyes. I also remember, clear as day, how it had made me a feel. Perhaps, it was commonplace somewhere in the world. In my world, it wasn’t. Mira showed me a semi-circular burn mark on her back. It stood out arrogantly against her soft brown skin. Then she zipped her dress and told me that her uncle did that to her if she didn’t fill the buckets. Or if the food was cold. She said that her uncle told her he’d do bad things to her is she didn’t work hard. 7 year olds don’t really know too many bad things. Not even imaginative 7 year olds like me. I figured if there was something worse than being burnt with a hot pan, I didn’t want to know of it. That night, Mira fell asleep with her hand resting on my arm. I remember putting an extra sheet on her, as the night grew darker and colder. I don’t think she noticed it. But if she had, I am sure she would have appreciated it.

I am not sure when exactly, but Mira stopped coming to Bombay. By this time, we had grown up and apart. I then left Bombay myself, for a few years and studied abroad. Even her mother had left Bombay for good. Then a couple of weeks ago, when I came home on a vacation- I saw Mira’s picture in my desk. It was under a pile of old cards and letters. It was a picture taken when we were 8 or 9. Her arm was around my waist. She was smiling her small smile. I wondered where she was, if she was okay. Was she married? Did she have children of her own? Had her uncle kept his promise and done bad things to her? I don’t think there was any way to find out. And standing there, in my room, now knowing full well the extent of said bad things, for the first time in a long time I wished I could go back to being 7 again.

Against the stark background of red muddy roads and small houses, we made a story.
I climbed trees with the sun browning my bare arms. I would sit there, watching the people go by, secretly looking for him, and holding my breath every time I saw a curly haired man. His curly hair touched his nape, resting lightly on the collar of his white shirt. He wore glasses, thin rimmed and intimidating. He carried a book covered in brown paper. I never found out which book it was, and honestly at that point it didn’t matter.
We spoke once that summer. He knew my father, he said. “Your father is a brilliant teacher. If it wasn’t for him, I would never have entered the teaching profession” He told me, shifting the book from one hand to another. I knew all that and more. I knew that in the flickering light of the candle, he taught old women the alphabet. The woman who worked in our house had told my mother this in a hushed tone. She begged my mother to never repeat this; she worried her husband would beat her if he found out.
I never saw him in the monsoons. The women said he had gone off somewhere, taking with him only his book and a small bag. They said he had taught them what they needed to know. Under the awning of a defunct temple, they read out words from children’s books, stringing letters together with the tip of their fingers.
I stayed out a lot, walking through the streets barefoot; footprints in a sea of red. I didn’t bother about the rain. My hair was always wet; lashing against the small of my back. It’s amusing, only in retrospect, that my childish heart was all knotted up over a person I barely knew. Somewhere along the way, I learnt to not hold my breath so often and that was a good thing because I didn’t see him after that.
He came to our house many years later when my father passed away. He touched my mother’s feet, and held out some flowers. He spoke to me in a very low voice, saying over and over again how he will remain indebted to my father. I didn’t have much to say. I offered him water and asked him if he’d like to eat something. He shook his head morosely. He had wanted to come for the cremation he said, but he had received the news too late. He left soon enough; I stared at his back until he became one with the dark. And that was that.
The truth is, in real life, these are how most stories pan out. Not all of the people we meet become lovers. Not all betray our trust or swindle us. Most people just walk in and out of our scheme of things altering our existence only in a negligible manner. That doesn’t make them or their stories any less important. It’s good to remember that in the dramatic lives we like to lead, there is also simplicity tucked away in the folds.

What colour do you think in?

In a large box of crayons, I always used up the blue one first.

I would colour everything blue. Blue people with their strangely shaped heads. Blue dogs. Blue sunsets.

They asked me to look around and see if these things were actually blue. It didn’t matter. I liked my blue people. They spoke to each other, their round mouths moving ever so slightly. They played in the fields, the blue sunlight making them squint. They shook their webbed hands.

There were children in school who made fun of me. They showed me their colouring books. They had soft brown coloured people. Pink coloured candy floss. You are stupid, they told me.
The teacher once asked me to hand over the blue crayon. She said I had to learn to colour things with other crayons.

The blue people disappeared off my pages. They probably played elsewhere.

I started writing in art class then. About these people. I would write about how they were real people, with real thoughts. I created a parallel universe where these people had jobs and they ate cornflakes in ceramic bowls for breakfast. Their children went to schools and they had loving pets in their homes.

My teacher handed me the blue crayon one day. She gave me no reason for returning it.
I realized it then, that although I preferred blue over all the other colours; I didn’t really care about colouring stuff. I actually cared more about the people around whom I wove these stories. I had come to enjoy the imaginary lives I created.

I put the crayon back in the box and continued writing.

I must have been 6-7 years old and we were visiting some relatives in Calcutta. They had a big house on the outskirts of the city. After the first few days, when the novelty of the big house had passed, we decided to go to the city. My enthusiastic uncle said that it was time we did some touristy things. He said we must go explore the city. Go take pictures at Howrah bridge and at Victoria Memorial and eat puchkas later.
We piled into the back of his old Fiat and set off on our little journey. There were way too many people to fit in and I had to perch onto my mom’s lap. The ride was very interesting. My uncle kept pointing out buildings that had been built in the British era; their structures subtle yet sturdy. My mother and aunt made a couple of stops to look at saris. I remember that there was a cow there that had very pretty eyes. It’s funny how tiny details always stay with you.
As we began to approach our destination, the excitement grew. Everyone started talking in loud voices. My uncle had to juggle driving and making animated gestures to spice up his anecdotes. In the middle of all this we didn’t see an oncoming car. My uncle hit the brakes at the last minute. The car made a loud screech. Thankfully, the two cars didn’t collide. The other driver shouted at my uncle in rapid Bengali. My uncle apologized and turned to see if we were all okay. We weren’t. At least I wasn’t. Since I was sitting on my mother’s lap, I had hit the front seat with the sudden jerk. My lower lip had a slight cut. But when you are 6, a slight cut is like having a fracture. I started crying and my entire family attempted to pacify me. My uncle apologized a hundred times and made promises of pastries and sweets. My mother told everyone, in a strangely high pitched tone, what a brave girl I was. “Isn’t she brave?” My mother asked the others. I continued crying. To make matters worse, my cousin pointed at my lip and said, “Look Ma, balloon!” what he was trying to say was that my lip was beginning to swell. That scared me more and my howls became too loud for my family to handle. Finally, resorting to being stern, my uncle asked me to stop crying if I wanted to see Victoria Memorial with everyone else. That did the trick, but only just. I switched over to whimpering.
The swelling however had begun to worry my folks. My uncle started driving towards an ice cream man to see if he had some ice. My sister, in an attempt to cheer me up, began to tell me a story to make me a laugh. It was a story about a king who had to stop a battle to go to the bathroom. I remember laughing a lot. The ice cream man didn’t have ice. He also cheerfully informed us of some massive power cut. He told us that finding ice now would be difficult. Then he saw my lip and my tear streaked face. He smiled and pinched my cheeks and said he had a solution. He handed me a cold pack of Frooti. It was semi-frozen. He told me that I could hold it to my lip for a while and then drink it.
Those were strangely simpler times. We saw the Howrah bridge and ate the puchkas, amidst all the other things. But my favourite part of the Calcutta trip was the semi frozen Frooti.

Summers

How many things from your childhood and youth will you remember when you’re 70? Will you remember how you ate cookies when you were specifically asked not to? Will you remember how you got mad at your siblings because they made fun of your handwriting? Will you remember what your first kiss felt like? Will you remember the bad stuff too? The people who failed you and the people you failed?
There is a part of my childhood that I will never forget. We’ll call that segment – Summers.
My parents didn’t really trip over themselves with the ‘let’s-enroll-our-children-in-a-million-summer activities’ and I don’t think I could have been more grateful. While some of my other friends who weren’t as lucky went to learn to stitch, swim and sing all in a day, I would run around the whole place with playful abandon. Exams would end in the first week of April and what followed was 2 months of nothing to worry about. The funny part is when I look back now, I wonder whether there really was anything to worry about back then.
The days in the summers played out in pretty much the same way. I would wake up late, drink tea (that tasted as close to milk as was possible) and then I would put on my shorts and my rubber slippers and go down to a friend’s place. Sometimes we would watch cartoons; sometimes we would run out and get an early start to the day. We played lots and lots of cricket. Building cricket with building rules and a rubber ball. If there was a secret place where all the lost cricket balls could be found, I can assure you that there will be a small hill of cricket balls with our names on it. I have had the good fortune of playing this game with my friends who not only liked playing it but also were surprisingly well read about it for their age. In hindsight, if that part of my life was taken away, I’d enjoy cricket a lot lesser.
By the time lunch came around and it got too hot to be outside, we’d drag ourselves home long enough to have lunch. Soon after, we’d be back to play cards in the stairwell or monopoly in someone’s home. The family members of children my age must have cursed our energy back then, because there were days when I think we played, shouted, fought and spoke non-stop for the whole day.
Evenings were always the same mix of cricket and climbing on walls to hide in a game of hide and seek. A friend of mine who lived on the ground floor had his kitchen window exactly where we played. We would huddle there, out of breath, and knock the window pane until his always-smiling grandmother handed us steel tumblers full of cold water. The feeling of cold water on a parched throat isn’t one I’ll be forgetting for a while to come.
In that brilliant time between dinner and bedtime, I’d read hungrily, taking in as much Enid Blyton or Hardy Boys or whatever else I could before my eyes shut out of sheer exhaustion. I would fight with my mother if she forgot to bring back new books from the library.
When we went back to school in June, in our sparkling new raincoats, our faces a few shades darker thanks to the playing in the sun, it was a strange feeling. A mix of excitement of a new school year and the inexplicable sadness that summer had ended.
There is this song I like a lot by Joni Mitchell. It’s called Urge for going. The lines that get me every time are “I had me a man in summer time/ He had summer coloured skin” That’s where I get the blog name, because that is just such a lovely description of colour. It has multiple layers in meaning. Every time I hear it, I feel a different feeling.
But, had I heard it as a kid, when I probably didn’t know better, my mind would go back to June 15 th , when we took with us our summer coloured skin to school, year after year. Where each time, we were a summer older, a summer wiser and had under our belt one extra summer worth of memories.
When I am 70, I’ll probably remember this feeling. The feeling when you run out of the summer, as the inky skies pour down on you, and you go to school with a bag full of freshly covered books and there is the excitement and the comfort that your whole life is ahead of you.